Ani DiFranco - Paradigm
Hear me and hear me good before you jump down my damn throat: I don't get Ani DiFranco. I mean, I never did. I played a show with her many years ago & she was hands-down one of the friendliest, funniest, humblest, and most charming creatures God ever put on this earth. But I listened to her music, and I scratched my head. I just didn't get it. For years, I've tried to like her because all my friends did. I felt like, as a songwriter, she is the pinnacle of the successful independent with the clout and the cred to back all of it up. Newsflash: I still don't really get her older records, but something about this new album, Knuckle Down, due on January 25th, finally got me.
Like the great women songwriters I revere, eventually I hear the songwriter standing at the edge of her rainbow staring down the colors only to find them staring back with mutual respect. Here is a mature, energetic, strong Ani DiFranco. I finally hear the Billie Holliday in her songs, the Joni Mitchell, the Nina Simone. I finally hear from her words a credo that we all live by as songwriters, to be patently honest at the expense of, perhaps, offending someone. She is clearly in rhythm with the world in a way that other songwriters, female or male, just aren't. She hears the train tracks and the wrestless howls, the aching need for love and the warmth possessed of the earth itself. She has cornered the patience with her own abilities and balanced them with the realities of her life, and she pays tribute to them. She is resolute in her reminiscenses. I finally caught up, or maybe she caught up with me. It's refreshing to hear words that tell me she knows just who we as songwriters are in the song "Recoil" when she sings "if you should happen to see my light/you can stop and ring my bell/i'm just sitting here in this dive strewn with half-written songs/taking one breath at a time, nothing much going on".
And finally, I understand Ani DiFranco. And I like her so very much.
BONUS TRACK: Recoil
You can pre-order this CD by clicking HERE.
RELEASE DATE: January 25
